The Day Jackie Robinson Signed With The Dodgers

Is everyone excited to see 42, the new film about Jackie Robinson? We definitely are, especially because 66 years ago today, Mr. Robinson officially signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers, and took to the field in an exhibition game against the Yankees!

Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 and began his professional baseball career with Brooklyn’s farm club, the Montreal Royals, and then came to Ebbets Field as a first baseman. The Brooklyn Dodgers signed him a few days before the start of the 1947 season, and on April 15, 1947 the team battled the Boston Braves on opening day. Though Robinson went hitless in that game, the Dodgers won 5-3. However, within two seasons, Robinson was the National League’s M.V.P.

In 1955, the Dodgers beat the Yankees to win the World Series, but by 1956 Robinson had announced his retirement, going on to be an executive at Chock Full O’ Nuts. His number, 42, was retired in 1997, though Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees is still using it. When he retires from the game this year, he will be the last MLB player to ever wear that number.

On June 4, 1919, the US Congress approved the 19th Amendment, which granted suffrage to women. The Amendment was not ratified by the states until August 18, 1920, but the approval was a huge victory for women's rights. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton first drafted and introduced the amendment in 1878, but it took over forty years for women to get the right to vote.
Before that, the rules of suffrage were undefined by the Constitution, though most...Read More

There are still a few good butcher shops left in this town, but unfortunately, sometimes you have to know where to look. That did not seem to be the case in 1910, when butcher shops could be found all over the city, and the butcher sections of supermarkets involved actual counters, not just sad, colorless hunks of meat wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam. But what did these markets look like?
In the New-York Historical Society Library's...Read More

New York has long been a food capital, from the upscale kitchens of our finest restaurants to the bagels and sausages on the street corners. But as anyone whose walked around Brooklyn has figured out, the next chapter of New York's food history has everything to do with the local, "artisanal" food scene that is making its mark on the city. From the rise of greenmarkets and food fairs to the focus on seasonal ingredients,...Read More